Day 237: Ezekiel 40–44 | Read The Bible In A Year | Bible Study with Commentary by Dr. Manny Arango

Hey Bible nerds, this is Dr. Manny Arango. Welcome to the Bible Department podcast powered by ARMA. We are walking through the entire Bible in a year. You can go to the description or thebibledepartment.com to download a reading plan and join the journey. Family, welcome to day 237. I'm excited to dive into Ezekiel chapters 40 to 44 today. I really enjoy this section of the book of Ezekiel. This is probably the hardest section of Ezekiel to read, but for whatever reason, I don't know. It being the difficult part of Ezekiel makes it the most interesting to me. So we're gonna dive in. If you've done the reading, you're probably a little confused. You're kind of like, what is going on? Feels like I'm reading Leviticus all over again and low-key, you are. Hopefully I can help bring some clarity. If you haven't done the reading today, I'm gonna encourage you, stop this video, stop the audio, go do the reading, okay? Ezekiel chapters 40, 41, 42, 43, 44. A little more reading than normal today on the Bible reading plan, but I think that the reading will add a lot of value and hopefully I can give you some context clues, some nerdy nuggets, and a timeless truth that will kind of help it all make sense. All right, context. I'm gonna give you literary context and then historical context for today. So two layers of context, then we'll dive into our nerdy nuggets for the day. Literary context, okay? If you've been reading the book of Ezekiel straight through, at this point, you kind of feel like, wait a second, there was action. This is interesting. There was narrative. There was prophecy. There were oracles. There was prediction. There's Ezekiel's fascinating life. And then there were these visions. Even when they were confusing, there were visions. And now we're just kind of walking through a temple. What's going on? Like the pace has slowed down. They're just talking about priests and their garments and which Levites can serve where and the renewal or the restoration of another temple. What's happening? Well, I had to ask you this question. What other book of the Bible can you think of that was non-stop action? Plagues. Moses as a baby avoiding death. A burning bush. The death of the firstborn. Just action, action, action, action, action. The glory of God on Mount Sinai. The giving of the Ten Commandments. I mean, non-stop action. Then all of a sudden, all the action halted. We came to a screeching halt and we just had instructions for a tabernacle for a long time. Just blue cords and yellow cords and red cords and yarn and instructions.

Can you remember a book where that happened? Yes. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Exodus. Exodus is the book that Ezekiel is modeled after. So Ezekiel is going to have non-stop action. Go, go, go. Visions. Oracles against the nations. Ezekiel can't cry even when his wife dies. We got prophecies against Jerusalem. Valley of dry bones. Yeah. This stuff's great. New heart, new spirit. All of a sudden, an angel came to me and showed me this temple and had a measuring line. We just started measuring stuff. We got cubits and we got a whole lot of, here we go, like, I mean, verse two of chapter 40. In visions of God, he took me to the land of Israel and set me on a very high mountain on thus on whose south side were some buildings that look like a city. He took me there and I saw a man whose appearance was like bronze. He was sitting in the gateway with a linen cord and a measuring rod in his hand. The man said to me, son of man, look carefully and listen closely. Pay attention to everything I'm about to show you. And there's a wall completely surrounding the temple area. The length of the measuring rod in the man's hand was six long cubits. The last time I was thinking about cubits was just a long time ago. Guess what? After God has restored, has given a vision of restoration, after there's an army and now after he's defeated the enemies and all the awesome, you know, prophetic words of restoration that Yahweh has spoken through Ezekiel, all through this second half of the book, now we get to the restoration of the temple and the pace is no longer, action, action, action, it's actually a little boring, boring, boring. So my job is to kind of help with that, okay? Because it's not boring. It's actually quite incredible. So the echo between Ezekiel and Exodus is deliberate. Just as in Exodus, okay, Ezekiel is preparing the people of Israel to enter the land, okay? So the same way that Moses is preparing the people to enter the land, Ezekiel is preparing the people to enter back into the land. And this is what's interesting, but not just yet. Another 35 years or so will pass before the possibility of a return. Another echo of Exodus, because when Moses starts preparing the people to enter the land, they're not going to actually enter the land until another 39 years. So these exiles here in Babylon have about 35 years before they are going to reenter the land, but Ezekiel is preparing them for it. And the people of Israel who are in the book of Exodus have about 39 years before they're going to enter the land, which wasn't God's plan, by the way. They wandered in the wilderness for 40 years because of their own sin and rebellion and hard-heartedness and ideology. But let's not digress. That is the literary context of this entire last portion of the book, this entire last segment or movement of the book. We are going to get instructions for Levites.

We're going to get instructions for the priesthood in general. We're going to get instructions for the temple. We're going to get instructions for all kinds of stuff that's temple-related, because we've got a literary structure that's very similar to the book of Exodus. All right, I hope that's helpful. Next, we got historical context. We're given one date at the beginning of this vast vision, the 10th day of the first month of the 25th year of the exile. 25 years, 25 years the people have been living in Babylon. It's been 14 years since Jerusalem has fallen, and it's been 25 years since this group got shipped off to Babylon. This places this later vision in the middle of the exile. Jerusalem is long gone. Any hope of return is fading as the years go by. The exiles are actually doing the exact thing that Jeremiah had told them to do. Remember, Jeremiah said, build homes, plant gardens, marry off your sons and daughters. You're going to be in Babylon for a while. If you seek the prosperity of the city, you'll prosper as well. They've actually put that into practice. They're settling down and making lives for themselves in Babylon. It is into this context, this time period, that Ezekiel starts to speak again. His silence is broken. He starts to speak again to show them that they will go home, that Israel will be restored, that God will bring renewal. All right, so that's context. I know I gave you a lot of context today, literary context, historical context, but both are really, really important to appreciate the beauty of these chapters because it can be a little hard to appreciate the beauty of these chapters because there's just a lot of detail. All right, let me give you some nerdy nuggets. First nerdy nugget, we get an angel measuring a bunch of things and showing Ezekiel the temple. The overall pattern of this vision is that of an angel guiding Ezekiel through what he has seen, measuring out the temple and describing it and its workings to Ezekiel. This is very different from all of the earlier visions when it was left to Ezekiel himself to try to describe the amazing things he was seeing. This is also the beginning of a new kind of prophetic vision. We see in Ezekiel another of the seeds of what would become apocalyptic literature. Isaiah had given us the poetic, extreme metaphor that would become the symbolic, over-the-top language of the literature, of apocalyptic literature. Okay, so Isaiah is contributing one aspect of what's going to become apocalyptic literature. And now Ezekiel is giving us the visions that would be a large part of apocalyptic writings. Okay, so we can begin to see in the writings of Isaiah and Ezekiel the foundation or the seeds that will become apocalyptic literature. Family, the wait is over. My brand new book, Crushing Chaos,

is out now and available everywhere books are sold. Literally today, I walked into a Barnes and Noble and I signed a bunch of copies at a physical location. So you can grab this book at a physical Barnes and Noble, or you can go to a Books A Million or Amazon or anywhere, books are sold and grab a copy. If you enjoy reading the Bible from an ancient perspective, if you understand that the beauty of scripture is actually knowing it in context, then you'll love this book. And if there's any chaos in your personal life, I think that reading the Bible from an ancient perspective can actually help to crush the chaos in your life. I think this book is gonna be a New York Times bestseller. I really do. I think we wrote a good one. I think you should get a copy today. All right, back to the episode. In particular, the idea of a vision guide is very, very, very specific to apocalyptic literature. That one aspect, okay, a vision guide, an angel that guides the prophet or writer through a vision, pointing out particular parts and giving descriptions and commentaries on it. We will see this style full blown in the book of Revelation as John is often guided through his visions by angels, right? So again, Ezekiel and Isaiah are both laying a foundation for what will become apocalyptic literature. And if you don't understand apocalyptic literature, it's really like very difficult

to understand the book of Revelation. All right, next nerdy nugget is based on Ezekiel 43. Okay, Ezekiel 43. Ezekiel 43 is all about the glory of Yahweh entering the temple. Now, remember, at the beginning of the book of Ezekiel, in our first movement through the book of Ezekiel, Ezekiel saw the glory of the Lord leave the temple. So this is a full circle moment. Okay, have you been like just walking through the narrative plot of the book of Ezekiel? We saw the glory of the Lord just rise up and leave the temple. And now the glory of the Lord is going to enter into the temple. This is chapter 43. This is the most significant part of the vision of a rebuilt temple in Jerusalem is that Yahweh enters it, okay? When Yahweh left the temple, he made the city vulnerable to attack without his presence to protect it. In this vision of a new temple, the glory is seen to return to the temple and the city. The message is clear. Yahweh will be with them to protect them and to save them to be their king and their God, just like Ezekiel had seen that Yahweh went into exile with his people and did not abandon them.

So now he sees him returned to the temple showing that he is still with them. Now, this vision is actually quite fascinating because Ezekiel is going to see the glory of the Lord returned to the temple, but the glory of God doesn't actually return to the new built temple. So when we get to the book of Ezra and Nehemiah, right? Nehemiah is rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem. Ezra is rebuilding the temple. We don't have that scene that we had with the first tabernacle in the first temple where the fire of God comes down and the glory of God comes down and enters. We actually don't have that again until Acts chapter two, because what God is communicating in Acts chapter two is that my glory is not gonna return until I establish my church, okay? So the glory of Yahweh entering the Holy of Holies is something that is actually missing, but we've got it here in Ezekiel as a prophecy, as a prediction, which means that Ezekiel's probably predicting or prophesying something that's not just gonna be fulfilled in the rebuilding of the actual temple, but that is gonna find its fulfillment in the true Messiah, in the person of Jesus. Yahweh did not enter the rebuilt temple in the way he did with Solomon's temple.

There's actually real, just hardcore evidence of this. A couple centuries later, when the Roman general Pompey entered the Holy of Holies and came out again completely unharmed, it became really obvious, got it, the glory of God must not live in the Holy of Holies, because had that happened during Moses' time, he would have died. During David's time, you touch the Ark of the Covenant, you fall flat on your face and you die, okay? So the fact that a Roman general can just walk through the Holy of Holies and nothing can happen means that the glory of Yahweh Yahweh did not return to the temple or to the Holy of Holies in the same way. This and other elements of the vision have led to questions about what this vision is actually portraying. Alright, also in chapter 43 we're gonna get sacrifices of atonement, we're gonna get a restored priesthood, the rest of chapter 43 describes the priest offering sacrifices of atonement to cleanse the new temple in order that Yahweh would remain there and it can function as a sanctuary, a place where Yahweh and his people can meet together. This is another message of hope. The priesthood will be restored, the sacrifices of Yahweh will be restored, the relationship to Yahweh that they represent will be restored. Remember this message is being given at the heart of the exile when such a thing would seem a world away. This would be absolutely, this would seem and feel absolutely, totally impossible. Just remember, time, like so much time has gone by. The people have been in exile now for 25 years. I wonder if you can just like think about 25 years. For some people that's half their life, that's that's a third of someone's life, that's, that's, it's a significant portion of life and so Ezekiel's prophesying, no, God's gonna restore all things. He's gonna restore the priesthood, he's gonna restore the sacrifices, he's gonna

restore the temple, which really means he's gonna restore our relationship with him. God is gonna bring the restoration of all things. Even though we've lost hope, even though we've lost faith, God is gonna bring the restoration of all things. All right, let's dive into our timeless truth for the day and that is that God never leaves us, never forsakes us, never abandons us, that we actually have the manifest presence of God in the worst situations of life. Now what Ezekiel sees at the beginning of the book is that the glory of God leaves the temple because of sin and because of debauchery and because of wickedness but then goes out in the exile to be with his people because he doesn't want to be far away from his people. God always finds a way to somehow function in relationship with us even in the middle of our sin. He doesn't compromise, he can't, okay, he just cannot, he can't be surrounded by wickedness because he's holy and so he leaves but it doesn't leave to just go off in outer space, doesn't leave to stay in heaven, no, he leaves to be with his exiled people in Babylon, like in the middle of discomfort and suffering, he's with them and then what do we have? The people are gonna get restored back to the land? Who's going back to the land? Yahweh's going back to the land. Someone asked me recently like, you know, there's a lot of suffering in life, like what makes you, what makes you believe in God even though there's just like a lot of suffering and I said, oh, because God doesn't shield himself from that suffering. That's why. Think about it, like if God had never like incarnated into the person of Jesus and Jesus had not suffered, then yeah, suffering would be a great reason for me to leave the faith but we don't have a God who watches us wallow in suffering, no, he's present with us. Not only is he present with us, he actually incarnates in the person of Jesus and enters into the reality of our suffering. I always say it like this, right, like there's two types of leaders. There's a kind of leader that wants you to pay a ultimate price of sacrifice but they don't want to pay that price and then there's a kind of leader that leads by example that says, yeah, I'll be the first to sacrifice. I'll be the first to sow. I'll be the first to give of myself and my

gifts and my talents. I'll be the first to do it and you don't want to know when you got a leader who's incarnational, who enters into the middle of whatever the suffering is, then it builds morale for the whole team and we have a leader, we have a God who goes, yeah, no, I'm gonna be with my people. I'm gonna be with my people even though they're in the middle of suffering. I'm gonna be with my people and ultimately I'm gonna send my son and I am going to enter into the human experience. I'm gonna enter into this suffering. I'm gonna enter into this pain. I'm gonna enter into all of the discomfort of the human experience because I'm not a leader who wants other people to pay a price that I'm not willing to pay. I'm willing to pay the ultimate price for this thing that I believe in and, man, we got enough leaders in our society who want other people to pay the price for the dreams and the goals and aspirations of the organization but they don't want to pay the price themselves and we just serve a God who says, nope, I'll pay the ultimate price. I know life is hard. I know there's cancer. I know there's miscarriages. I know I know that there I know that there's pain. I know that there's betrayal. I know that there's death and sickness and poverty. And I know that there's racism. And I know, I know, I know that the life that y'all live down there is difficult and hard. But instead of just looking at your suffering and empathizing, I'm present with you in suffering. And that presentness or that presence really culminates in the incarnation of his son, Jesus, who then takes on flesh and blood and relegates himself to a life of disappointment and hardship and all kinds of suffering. And you know, when I look at the person of Jesus, I can say, you know what?

I can be a good soldier and I can thug this out. I can suffer. Why? Because there's one who's with me. And he's not just with me in some spooky, goosebump, spiritual way. He's with me. He knows what it's like to live the human experience. He knows exactly what it is like to experience loss, pain, disappointment, gossip, insecurity, all of it. He's human. And a big chunk of today's reading was all about the priests and the priesthood. Well, the Bible tells us that we have a great high priest that knows how to sympathize with all of our weaknesses. And that, man, that's the beauty of being a priest is that you're one with the people. So the priesthood gets restored for the people of God in the book of Ezekiel in our reading for the day. And I wanna take this moment to highlight the real priest, the ultimate priest, whose name is Jesus, who took on flesh and blood, entered into the suffering and the drama of our story and became one of us. And he doesn't save us from afar, but he actually comes near, takes on skin and bone, and actually saves us as one of us. And that, that's the timeless truth. The presence of God is a game changer. Tomorrow, we got day 238.

It's our final day in the book of Ezekiel. So if you're on a streak, I'm proud of you. If you're not on a streak, get your life together, please. The Bible's good for you. It'll change your life, I promise. I'll see you right here tomorrow as we close out the book of Ezekiel. It's gonna be amazing. I can't wait. I'll see you tomorrow. Peace. Thanks so much for joining us on the Bible Department Podcast. If this episode was helpful, how about you leave a comment, share with a friend, and subscribe so that you never miss an episode. To learn more about the show, head to thebibledepartment.com. We'll see you right back here tomorrow.